| This qualitative case study explored how executives, middle managers, and employees made sense of a significant organization hairball. An organization hairball, defined as a significant business challenge that is a source of pain, crosses organizational boundaries and involves diverse stakeholders. It has no obvious solutions, has challenging interpersonal or political dynamics, and is characterized by the complexity of numerous overlapping relationships. This research investigated the encouraging and inhibiting conditions for making sense of, surfacing, and untangling organization hairballs. The theoretical framework for this interpretive study was sensemaking. The study drew on organization complexity, culture, and leadership theoretical literatures. The research setting was a multi-billion, not-for-profit, faith-based healthcare system located in the United States. The organization hairball was management and labor tension, coupled with precarious financial health, which threatened the organization's viability. The researcher interviewed executives, hospital administrators, and employees using an appreciative narrative approach. This research revealed five distinct phases that characterize the process of addressing organization hairballs. Surfacing, making sense of, and untangling a significant organization hairball is a transformational process in which patterns of meaning making emerge differently at each organizational level. Making meaning was related to personal, organization, and the identity of others relative to power and/or competence, as well as perceptions about current reality. Over time---and based on actions, emotions, and language used---individuals at all levels made new meanings about self and others through conversations, joint meetings, and shifts in sensegiving. The conditions that encouraged the surfacing of the organization hairball include an aligned, action-oriented, decisive senior leadership team; flexible middle management willing to collaborate; and employees who took calculated risks. Other encouraging factors were a culture that fostered direct, honest communication about tough issues; a structure that ensured clear levels of authority and accountability; and a substantial level of pain. Inhibiting conditions early on included a loosely coupled structure, multiple independent cultures, and leadership stuck in traditional views about management-labor collaboration.; Key words. sensemaking, making sense of, meaning making, complex challenge, tough challenge, mess, complexity, leadership, employees, middle managers, culture, structure, complexity... |
